This years E3 crossed a line of taste, says Deus Ex and Epic Mickey dev Warren Spector

Respected developer believes E3 didn’t do enough to reflect the diversity in gaming

Legendary Deus Ex creator Warren Spector has told GamesRadar how this year’s E3 left him frustrated: “What I saw at E3 this year crossed a line for me of taste”. Talking about the content of the recent game expo, the Epic Mickey developer lamented how E3 missed a chance to better reflect what gaming is about. “We didn’t show the breadth and variety of the content that we offer.”

Spector - whose past games also include the Thief series - explained his view by highlighting the ultra-violence of this year’s show and how it hid some of the industry’s creativity: “Just to be clear, I’m not saying people shouldn’t make that kind of game and I’m not saying people shouldn’t like them… But I want the guys making those games to think twice about it. I mean, do we really need slow-motion blood sprays? Do we really need characters defined by rape? Do we really need that? Come on, guys, we can be more creative than that.”

Above: Warren Spector and the game he created Epic Mickey

Were the showcase games highlighted at this year’s E3 too violent? Warren Spector isn’t the first person to call out the graphic violence on display, our own Dave Houghton wrote about the embarrassing reaction to some of the more brutal scenes from the press conferences. So while violence has become an easy thing for developers to lean back on, as Spector points out “doing things because they’re easy doesn’t seem like a good reason to keep doing them.”